A retired U.S. Army Colonel and chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell describes ‎Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK, a.k.a. MKO and PMOI) removal from the U.S. list of terrorists as “a terrible ‎move.”‎

Appearing on the Real News Networkon Sunday to discuss the similarities and differences in the two ‎US presidential candidates’ foreign policies, Laurence Wilkerson said the MEK group is still a terrorist ‎group.‎

When asked about the Romney and the kind of people around him, Wilkerson said he knew Mitchell ‎Reiss quite well, adding “Mitchell was an advocate for the delisting of the MEK, the Mujahedin-e-‎Khalq, the terrorist group—still a terrorist group, in my mind—from Iran.”‎

Reiss, who is a foreign policy adviser to the Republican wannabe U.S. president Mitt Romney, were ‎among the bold-faced names who made speeches in support of MEK delisting as a terrorist group.‎

According to Christian Science Monitor, many of the former high-ranking US officials who had been ‎advocating removal from U.S. terrorist list of the group “have been paid tens of thousands of dollars to ‎speak in support of the MEK.”‎

Wilkerson then went on to say that removal of MEK from the U.S. terror list “was a terrible move in all ‎respects, because terrible move in the way the Iranians perceived it, and a terrible move because it ‎basically acknowledged a terrorist group is now not a terrorist group anymore, and they clearly ‎certainly still are.”‎